The New Yorker's Margaret Talbot has a fascinating article this week about the high rate of teen pregnancy among evangelical teens. An excerpt:
According to Add Health data, evangelical teenagers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestants and Jews. On average, white evangelical Protestants make their "sexual début" -- to use the festive term of social-science researchers -- shortly after turning 16. Among major religious groups, only black Protestants begin having sex earlier. ...
Like other American teens, young evangelicals live in a world of Internet porn, celebrity sex scandals and raunchy reality TV, and they have the same hormonal urges that their peers have. Yet they come from families and communities in which sexual life is supposed to be forestalled until the first night of a transcendent honeymoon. (Sociologist Mark) Regnerus writes, "In such an atmosphere, attitudes about sex may formally remain unchanged (and restrictive) while sexual activity becomes increasingly common. This clash of cultures and norms is felt most poignantly in the so-called Bible Belt." Symbolic commitment to the institution of marriage remains strong there, and politically motivating -- hence the drive to outlaw gay marriage -- but the actual practice of it is scattershot.
Leave a comment